Everett secures deal for new downtown hotel

Published 8:46 pm Monday, December 20, 2010

EVERETT — It looks like it’s actually going to happen: Downtown Everett is going to get an upscale hotel.

City leaders and a Seattle developer are in the final stages of negotiating a deal that would bring an eight-story Courtyard by Marriott hotel to the southeast corner of Colby Avenue and Wall Street.

A city-owned parking lot is located there now.

If the deal closes, the Seattle developer Touchstone Corp. expects to break ground in May.

“There were doubters that this would go,” Mayor Ray Stephanson said. “(They doubted) that we could find someone even in this economy who could build this hotel. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

The mayor said the hotel was an important building block for the vibrant, walkable downtown city leaders are working toward. At the moment, the city has no big hotel in its downtown core.

City leaders got a look at what that 156-room hotel would look like last week when the developer’s architect shared renderings and details.

Architect Jeff Williams of the firm Johnson Braund Design Group described a hotel where virtually every room would have views of either the mountains or the waterfront.

The first level would include a bistro inside where people could buy a sandwich and then eat it at an outside courtyard.

Retail space is planned on part of the street level and there should be space for sidewalk seating.

The second level of the hotel would be devoted to conference rooms with large open windows that should take advantage of the views.

Williams also expects the hotel would have an indoor pool.

An underground parking garage would be located off Wall Street and would offer at least three levels of parking.

The city, which owns the land, put a number of safeguards in place to make sure the hotel would be a high-quality development, said Mike Palacios, real property manager for the city.

Those safeguards include a stipulation that the hotel can’t be sold to a budget chain. The city also would require the developer to own the hotel until it’s running smoothly. The city defined that as an average of 70 percent occupancy for three straight months.

The city also retains the option to take back the property in the event the deal falls through.

The developer offered to pay $1.6 million for the land. The city is reinvesting it into parking for city employees in the basement of the hotel.

The city originally bought the property in 1973 for $250,000. Officials said it the land now has been appraised at $1.2 million to $1.4 million.

As part of the agreement, the city plans to spend $450,000 to prepare the land for development. That cost includes the disposal of contaminated soil on site.

The agreement between the city and the developer will close once building permits are issued, and that’s expected in the next month, Palacios said.

The developer hopes to have the hotel open for business by January 2012.

“They are champing on the bit,” he said.

Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.